


Imagine Dragons

by appending_fic



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Gravity Falls
Genre: Dragons, Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Gen, Kidnapping, Librarians, POV Female Character, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 17:38:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2741234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/appending_fic/pseuds/appending_fic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mabel comes to Wendy for advice, and because it's Gravity Falls, it ends with weirdness.</p><p>"No, we are not summoning dragons."</p><p>"So what if I...already did?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imagine Dragons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gogollescent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/gifts).



“Hey, Wendy, do you believe in dragons?”

Wendy looked down at Mabel, her eyes narrowed. “That’s a complicated question.”

“What do you mean?” Mabel hopped up onto the counter and leaned back casually.

“I mean that up until a couple of years ago, the answer would have been no. My instinct is to say no; just because ghosts and zombies and gnomes exist, doesn’t mean dragons exist. But when it comes to you and your brother, I’ve learned to expect that when you ask questions like that, the answer invariably turns out to be yes.”

“So is that a yes?”

“No,” Wendy sighed. “It’s more of a, ‘why do you ask’?”

Mabel tugged the book she’d found out of her sweater and put it on the counter. Wendy looked down at the book, reading over the title several times. At last, she looked up, finding Mabel’s head a little above hers from Mabel’s vantage on the counter.

“No.”

“What, you don’t believe in dragons?”

“No, we are _not_ summoning dragons. Especially because the last third of the book appears to have been set on fire.”

“Aw, come on!” Mabel tried giving Wendy puppy-dog eyes, an expression still remarkably effective due to Mabel’s childlike build. “Think about it: flying through the air on the back of a gigantic rainbow-breathing dragon, looking down so everyone looks like ants. Do you know how awesome that would be?”

Wendy took a deep breath, spreading her hands flat against the counter. “Mabel. How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“How much time have you spent in Gravity Falls?”

“Three months a year for four years, so...about a year.”

“When has summoning anything helped any of us?”

Mabel frowned thoughtfully as she kicked her feet against the counter. “Well...never.”

Wendy smiled and tugged Mabel into a loose one-armed embrace. “There you go. Look, this book is obviously awesome, but I think summoning dragons sounds like one of those ideas that we’d end up running around trying to clean up after.”

“Yeah, about that.”

Once the Society of the Blind Eye had been disbanded, the ability to sense danger - nothing supernatural, just the ability to piece together enough facts about your circumstances to realize that something bad was going down - had become a basic survival skill in Gravity Falls.

Especially if you lived at Ground Zero for the town’s supernatural weirdness.

“Mabel?”

“So what if I...already did?”

Oh lord, she looked so contrite, kicking at the counter with her Heelys, in her rainbow puppy sweatshirt. Yelling obviously wasn’t going to do any good, setting aside the fact that yelling at Mabel made you feel like you’d drop-kicked a piglet into a volcano.

Wendy took a deep breath. “Okay, Mabel, what exactly did you do? And where’s Dipper? He’s good at helping you work through this stuff.”

Mabel didn’t reply.

Wendy poked her, hard, in the shoulder. “Mabel.”

Mabel ducked her head. “Look, the thing is-”

“You got him kidnapped by a dragon.”

“I was going for something cuddly and adorable! And it was, it _was_ , Wendy.” Mabel’s eyes went wide and star-struck. “But then it turned out that I forgot that a rainbow-breathing dragon is not _that_ different from a fire-breathing dragon. Just more colorful.”

“Okay, so walk me through how it ended up kidnapping Dipper.”

“Haha, funny story-”

“Do you know what? It’s not important. Come on, Mabel, we’re going to my house.”

“What? Why?”

“Because we need to mount a rescue mission, and that means we need something a little more substantial than a grappling gun.” Wendy swung by the Employees Only door and kicked it open. “Hey, Stan, do you want to watch the shop or help us rescue your nephew from dragons?”

“What? I don’t know; I guess the shop!”

“We’ll call when we’ve got an update!”

Mabel practically bounced into the seat of Wendy’s car, a tiny little Beetle she was still convinced was haunted or intelligent or something, despite the absence of any concrete evidence one way or another (and on which Wendy had forbidden further experimentation after Dipper got that stain on the passenger’s seat). Wendy glanced sidelong at the brunette, briefly envying Mabel her ability to face this with a smile. Dipper might not have been Wendy’s brother, but the thought of him in the clutches of a dragon terrified her.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Wendy asked.

“Sure! I got you to help me; we’re going to kick that dragon’s ass.”

“Oh.” Wendy let that sink it. People thought she was pretty, or funny, or had good taste in music. People told her things like that all the time. Even the people who’d professed most strongly to care about her had never indicated, in any way, that they had absolute faith in her abilities. “Um, Mabel, I don’t want you to get your hopes up-”

Mabel grabbed Wendy’s head and turned it toward her.

“Mabel, I gotta keep my eyes on the-”

“You listen to me, Missy. You are a strong, capable woman with a good head on her shoulders. Combined with my ingenuity and stick-to-it-iveness, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish! Come on, high five _girl power_!”

Wendy high-fived Mabel and kept driving. When they reached the house, Wendy kicked open the front door and headed for her room. “You ever handled a bolt-action rifle?” Wendy asked.

“We - we’re going to kill it?”

Wendy turned and grabbed Mabel by the shoulders. She tried to give Mabel a reassuring smile. “Look. I don’t know what we’re getting into here. I don’t know if we’ll be able to talk to this thing, or if there’s anything we can do to get it away from Dipper. But what I do know is that when you’re out in the woods, you want to be ready for anything, including shooting an animal that’s otherwise going to kill you. I know you don’t want to hurt anything, but if it’s a choice between you being safe and killing something, I’ll put a bullet through that sucker’s brain. So, do you have any experience with guns?”

Mabel shook her head. “Just my grappling hook.”

“Well, hold onto that.” Wendy grabbed her Browning and Marley and about three boxes of ammo apiece, a pair of axes, and checked she had her hunting knife on her. Once she was sure she had everything, she patted Mabel on the shoulder. “Now, what do you know about this thing?”

Mabel took a deep breath. “It’s got scales all over every color of the rainbow and claws as tall as you, plus it can breath rainbows which is _a lot more dangerous than you’d imagine_ , oh, and it flies and since it’s got like a sixty-foot wingspan or something, it’s absolutely terrifying.”

Wendy took a deep breath and reminded herself she loved Mabel. Bludgeoning the girl to death because she made a questionable decision wasn’t going to make either of them feel better, and would probably be hypocritical.

“Do you have any idea where it went?”

“Oh, that’s easy. It flew off toward the falls.”

“ _Gravity_ Falls,” Wendy said, hoping that Mabel was joking or wrong or something.

“Yep!” Mabel’s grin faded. “Is that a problem?”

Wendy shook her head, tossing her hair back. “Nah, it’s nothing. Just wanted to make sure.”

Telling Mabel that the waterfall from which the town took its name had _always_ had a reputation for weirdness, even when the Society of the Blind Eye was running around, wasn’t going to help anything. They were already fighting a dragon; things couldn’t get much weirder than that.

There was only one road that drew near the falls; people wouldn’t even eat fish you caught too close to it. When they arrived, Wendy took a few minutes to make sure her rifles were in working order.

The waterfall rose ominously over the river, casting its near-constant rainbow over the scene. Wendy assessed their ways up; like most teenagers, she’d climbed up the falls once on a dare. She knew there was a slick path up the front side of the falls, and a long, winding climb up the rear. She...couldn’t quite remember which path she’d taken, which meant this whole thing was a crapshoot.

“So, Mabel, short and slippery, or long and dry?”

Mabel gave Wendy a long glare. She carefully took Wendy by the elbow and led her to the edge of the river, near where the water entered. Then Mabel shifted her arm, more snugly holding Wendy close to her.

Wendy shifted uncomfortably. “Mabel, not that I’m not flattered, but-”

“Shush.” Mabel pulled out her grappling gun, held it up, and fired. She tugged on it a few times, shot Wendy a winning smile, and then retracted it, sending them soaring up the cliff. Once they’d settled, Mabel gave Wendy a smug smile.

“People always forget about the grappling hook,” she said. She then turned on her heel back along the winding river that fed the falls. “Now, let’s…”

She trailed off; Wendy felt her own mind stutter a little. A monstrous mountain stretched up above them, set with dozens of caves and tunnels.

“Was this...what you were worried about?”

Wendy put her head in her hands. “Yes. No. I just live in constant amazement at how Gravity Falls exceeds my expectations at how weird things can be.”

Mabel shook her head. “Nah, it’s just a good old-fashioned quest. Come on!” She grabbed Wendy and dragged her to the base of the mountain, where a wide, winding path started up.

As they climbed the mountain, Wendy looked out at the scenery beyond it. It wasn’t Gravity Falls, that was for sure. It was like something out of a dream, or out of a book. Rainbows arced across the scene, verdant forests dotted with pure blue rivers winding through them.

Wendy felt she could almost remember that she hadn’t seen this when she was here last time, that something else had topped the falls. She wondered who was responsible for what she saw here…

“Man, it’s pretty up here!”

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool. You have any idea where we can find Dipper?”

Mabel’s hand pointed up. “Top of the mountain, girl.”

“Right. Let’s get moving.”

Wendy led the way, feeling, that as the older of the two and possessor of firearms training, she was best equipped to handle their defense. The rise was surprisingly anti-climactic, such that Wendy was highly on edge by the time they rounded a bend to reveal the rocky ledge of the summit and the wide cave set within. A small hill of flesh sat between them and the entrance to the cave, covered in rainbow-colored scales.

Wendy stuck out a hand to keep Mabel from bolting forward immediately. “Look, we need to take this carefully. We don’t know what it’s going to do when it sees us.”

“Well, generally at this point people start talking about me eating people and setting them ablaze, but that’s only happened a couple of times and it was an accident.”

The rumbling, hissing voice shook the air from above them; Wendy yelped, glancing up, and met gigantic eyes of hazel, almost gold. She glanced back at the cave and saw no pile of scales. The dragon was _fast_ , she realized.

“Look, we’re here for Dipper Pines - sixteen-year-old boy, brown hair, brown eyes, sneezes like a kitten?”

A deep rumbling laugh echoed from the dragon’s chest. “He does, doesn’t he?”

“I wouldn’t mention it; he’s very sensitive about his machismo,” Mabel said. “But the point stands, we’d really like him back. We love him a ton, and it’d be sad if I never saw him again.”

The rainbow dragon, clinging to the vertical wall with little apparent trouble, clambered down, circling Mabel and Wendy. It set its head on the ground, smiling with forearm-length fangs. “But he’s so vibrant and curious - easily the most interesting person I’ve ever met.”

Mabel looked a little crestfallen. “Oh.”

Wendy took a step forward, feeling her hands clench a little in the tension at confronting a dragon head-on. “Look, is there any way we can get him back, anyway? Mabel’s right; we care about him a lot.”

The dragon scowled, a deep, more threatening rumble echoing in its chest. “I don’t like when people take my stuff.”

Wendy scoffed. “He’s not yours. He’s a person. And I swear, if you fight me on this, you’ll be sorry.”

The dragon reared its head back and spat a line of rainbow light into the sky. It lanced through clouds and a passing flock of geese, searing the air with the scent of burnt sugar. “You would dare challenge me? A stupid ape?”

“Hey!” Mabel’s voice was as sharp and angry as Wendy had ever heard it. The dragon, shocked, dipped its head back down to her level. “I know you’re lonely, but that doesn’t excuse kidnapping people. And I _know_ you’re going to say Dipper’s happy here, but he’s not going to be happy here forever, and then what are you going to do?”

The dragon snorted, letting out a cloud of rainbow mist that smelled like Smile Dip. “Then what would you have me do? Live alone for all eternity?”

“Of course not!” Mabel pulled out the copy of The Summoning of Dragons and handed it to Wendy. “We’re going to get you a friend.”

“No!” The dragon snatched the book from Wendy’s hands. “Dragons are vicious, amoral creatures! The closest concept they have to friendship is ‘an enemy that isn’t dead’. None of us want one of those flying around.”

“How are you _not_ an amoral monster?” Wendy asked.

The dragon set down the scorched book and turned to the back, pointing at a passage.

Wendy and Mabel together bent to read it.

_”Yet draggons are notte liken unicornes, I willen. They dwellyth in some Realm defined bye thee Fancie of the Wille and, thus, it myte bee thate whomsoever calleth upon them, and giveth them theyre patheway unto thys worlde, calleth theyre Owne dragon of the Mind._

_”Yette, I trow, the Pure in Harte maye stille call a Draggon of Power as a Forse for Goode in thee worlde, and this one nighte the Grate Worke will commense. All hathe been prepared. I hath laboured most mytily to be a Worthie Vessle…”_

Wendy looked at Mabel, sweet, positive Mabel, who called a dragon that shone like rainbows and wouldn’t do anything to hurt her brother. She looked back up at the dragon, who managed to look at once angry and remorseful, and she smiled at it.

“Bring Dipper out here. I’ve got an idea.”

Dipper emerged from the cave, blinking at the bright light outside. When he glanced at Mabel and Wendy, his eyes went wide and he made a shooing motion. “Go, get out of here!” he snapped.

“Oh, yeah, because otherwise the dragon we’ve been talking to for five minutes will see us,” Mabel said. “Relax! We’ve got a way to get you out of here.” She handed Dipper the book.

He stared at it for several moments before giving his sister a wide-eyed, incredulous look. “So your solution to me being kidnapped by a dragon is...more dragons?”

“Not just any dragons - the _dragon of your mind_!”

Wendy was impressed, even though Dipper apparently did not get it...which was understandable. He hadn’t read the warning labels on the book.

She was going to need to talk to both of them about that before it got someone killed.

Dipper looked down at the book uncertainly. “I don’t know about this, Mabel. What if I’m not pure in heart? I’ve done a lot of shitty things, and I can be rude and selfish and-”

Mabel put a finger on his lips, shutting him up for the moment. “I trust you, Dipper.”

In the end, the dragons gave them a ride back to the Mystery Shack; once they’d landed, Dipper stared at the sky until both had vanished into the sky.

“Wow,” he said.

Wendy clapped him on the back. “Good job, Dipper.”

“I mean, _wow_ ,” Dipper repeated, twisting his head around. He was grinning. “Did you _see_ her?”

“Your dragon? Of course.” The dragon of Dipper’s mind was jet-black and covered with stars, constellations scattered across her form, with the Little Dipper splashed across her forehead. She was as graceful and beautiful as the rainbow dragon, and Mabel’s instincts had been right. The dragon of Dipper’s mind could no more hurt the products of Mabel’s imagination than the dragon of Mabel’s mind could hurt Dipper.

And now the both of them were going to live in the strange, dreamlike place beyond Gravity Falls.

It was the best ending they could have hoped for.

The next day, Wendy was checking the stock room when she heard Stan.

“Hey, we don’t allow monkeys in here - OH GOD!”

She arrived just as the crashing and screaming ended, to find Stan crumpled, bruised but, thankfully, not bleeding, at the feet of an orangutan. The animal looked up at Wendy and pointed at their collection of books on the paranormal.

“Ook.”

Wendy shook her head. “I’m not…”

Soos stuck his head out of the Employees Only door. “Hey, Mr. Pines, are you o...no.” He stepped out. “Can I help you?”

“Ook!” the orangutan insisted, pointing at the books.

“Ah, we’ve got a fine selection here. Was there any particular type of beast or supernatural occurrence you wanted to read about?”

The orangutan made a wide, slow flapping motion, like a monstrous flying lizard-

“The Summoning of Dragons,” Wendy said.

“Eek!” The orangutan knuckled its way to Wendy and handed her a business card.

The Librarian  
Unseen University  
 _Nunc Id Vides, Nunc Ne VIdes_

Wendy handed it back to him. “I think Dipper stuck it in his room. You want me to get him?”

“Ook!”

Taking that as a yes, Wendy ran upstairs and rooted through Dipper’s desk until she found the small scorched tome, which she returned to the orangutan.

“Um...we accidentally summoned a few dragons while we had this. You don’t...need them to go away, do you?”

“Ook?”

“Nah. The dragons wouldn’t hurt a fly. If you met Mabel and Dipper, you’d understand.”

The orangutan pulled back his lips to give her what was probably intended to be a friendly smile. “Ook.”

Wendy chuckled. “Well, thanks. I hope you don’t lose track of that thing again. I wouldn’t want to see it in the wrong hands.”

The orangutan gave her a glare that made it clear he _was_ a librarian, through and through, and then made for the exit. Soos decided to take the opportunity to see to Stan, while Wendy returned to the counter.

It was just another week in Gravity Falls.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a treat for you, Gogollescent, because I was browsing the letters and saw your request and everything just came to me. I hope you don't mind that this ended up being a crossover, and I hope you do like it. I did my best to give a nice focus to the girls and the day-to-day adventures. Happy yuletide!
> 
> The text from "The Summoning of Dragons" is a direct quote taken from "Guards, Guards" by Terry Pratchett, which I would recommend you all read.


End file.
